Tuesday, September 8, 2009

New Dell MP, some inside information

At a site all the new Dell MPs were loaded and some issues popped up. This blog posting will describe these issues.

Not all Dell servers are properly recognizedOnly 5% of the Dell Servers was recognized properly. All other remaining Dell Servers weren’t shown at all in the View Dell > State View > Servers in the Monitoring Pane. When in the Monitoring Pane the View Discovered Inventory was opened and adjusted to show the Dell Unmanaged Windows Server, all the remaining Dell servers were shown. Also the reason was stated: OMSA needed to be of version 5.3 up to 6.1.

But that is the case, OMSA version 6.1 is installed and operational on all Dell servers. The OpsMgr event log showed no errors what so ever. The Dell MPs landed properly but somehow didn’t recognize the Dell servers.

Since all Dell MPs were loaded, I decided to bring this MP suite back to the basics. So I deleted the Detailed MP, DRAC MP and the CMC MP. Also the Information Alerts On MP was loaded. This one had to go as well, since Back-To-Basics is the credo.

However, the Discovery being used here (Dell Server Discovery), runs every 24 hours. Which is neat but now I wanted to see some quick results, so I made an override which reduced it to 5 minutes. I put that override in a MP of its own so that a simple deletion of it will bring the discovery back to its normal rate, 24 hours.

Bingo! Soon enough the other Dell servers started popping up in the Console as being Dell Servers and ended up being neatly monitored by the Dell MP. So the special MP containing the override on the frequency of the Discovery could be deleted.

Specific Dell Tasks run from the Console are using default credentials When a Dell server is properly recognized there are 11 tasks available to be launched from the OpsMgr Console. However, many of these tasks are set in such a manner that they use the default credentials (User: Root, Password: Calvin). These can not be changed. So when these tasks need to be used in an OMSA environment where the credentials have been changed (which is for many companies a compliance issue) these tasks won’t run since the wrong credentials are being used. The only way to go about it is to disable these tasks and recreate them with the new credentials. However, the credentials are being stored in clear text. Which isn’t neat either…

These tasks are: - Check Power Status - Power Reset - Power On - Turn LED Identification On - Turn LED Identification Off - Power Off Gracefully - Power Cycle - Force Power Off

This one needs to be imported as well. With these two MPs (the one you already loaded and the one I just mentioned) you cover much of the Dell Servers.

This posting of mine describes it in detail: http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-dell-mp-explained-outside.html, Conclusion section: '...On top of that: start small with only the ‘utility’ Dell.Connections.HardwareLibrary and the MP Dell.WindowsServer.Scalable. Go from there and see what it does and what adjustments are needed...'

I am having the same problem of Dell servers not showing up. I ran through your fix and the server count went from 30 to 80 and then quickly back down to 30. I have about 150 servers that should show up. They are all incorrectly stating that OMSA is incorrect version. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Until now I haven't use these MPs. But have you read the guides of these MPs? Are the DRACs and CMCs already present in OpsMgr (these SNMP devices)? It seems to me that the DRACs and CMCs must be present in some kind of way in OpsMgr before the MPs can pick them up.

I too am having the problem of Dell servers not showing as Dell managed. I have reinstalled OM. All versions of OM are at 6.2 however the Discovered Inventory (Dell Unmanged Windows Server) view has “Unable to connect to Dell namespace. Install a sup[ported version of OpenManage Server Administrator (V5.3 or later) displayed. I have removed all the Dell MP’s except the Dell Windows Sever (scalable edition) and Dell Base hardware Library. I have changed the discovery interval to 10 minutes. I have Flushed Health Service and state. I have also spent considerable time on the phone with Dell. I have a few servers that will show as managed for a few hours than disappear but the majority will not ever show as a dell managed. Any help would be appreciated.

I have encountered this Dell discovery issue. You can enable logging of the discovery by adding an override to the "Dell Server Discovery" and set the LogLevel to 1. Also set the Interval to 900 (15mins) so you can see the behaviour. A log is created in %windir%\Temp which shows the discovery run. I am getting an intermittant failure when the OMSA version is discovered which means that the 'Unmanaged' value is set and the server ends up in the "Dell Unmanaged" group. the error I see in the log is -

On the servers I am having trouble with, it seems the dell wmi namespace doesn't exist. When trying to connect to root\cimv2\dell using wbemtest I get the error "invalid namespace". So I guess a reinstall should fix this issue. Just curious what would cause this issue on so many servers (98 in my case). Is there a known issue that the Dell WMI namespace might not get created when you install certain versions of OMSA?

Veeam

NiCE

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On an almost daily basis I work with Azure, OMS & System Center related technologies. At the moment my main focus areas are Azure, OMS, SCOM & SCCM.

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The information in this blog is provided 'AS IS' with no warranties and confers no rights. This blog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my own personal opinion. All code samples are provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.